Conflict Over Postponement of Control Deadline

Two crucial ISSUES of the 1970s—the economy and the environment—meet head-on in the government's drive to reduce the automobile's contribution to American air pollution. In pleading its inability to meet a federal emission-control deadline for 1975 model cars, Detroit raised the specter of shutdowns and joblessness across the country. Every seventh worker owes his job, directly or indirectly, to the automotive industry. But environmentalists insist that the automobile is a serious threat to public health and is responsible for up to 80 per cent of the air pollution in urban areas.

In finally granting the delay on April 11, William D. Ruckel-shaus noted that the economic argument weighed heavily on the “terribly complex and important” decision he had been called on to make as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “Involved,” he said, “are billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs, the single most important segment of our economy, the largest man-made contributor to air pollution and the ambivalence of the American public's intense drive for healthy air and apparently insatiable appetite for fast, efficient and convenient automobiles.”

The decision, though granting a delay, left Detroit displeased over interim standards and special standards for California, thus setting the stage for a battle in Congress to weaken the 1970 law that set forth new stringent emission controls. The automobile makers immediately faced the outspoken opposition of Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D Maine), principal author of the 1970 law, who held hearings April 16–18 on the Ruckelshaus decision before the Senate Air and Water Pollution Subcommittee.